By Jennifer Solis
It took Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa about 25 minutes into his 35-minute State of the City speech this evening, to get to what everybody was waiting to hear – his plans to reshape the Los Angeles Unified School District.
He proposed two major changes in how the three-quarter million student school district will be run, if he can get the state legislature, and possibly the district’s voters, to change the charter under which the LAUSD is operated.
The mayor would turn control of the district over to the superintendent, with the elected school board reduced to being simply a clearinghouse for complaints and parental input.
A council of local mayors, with the Los Angeles mayor having by far the most power, since the control is population proportional, will hire and fire the superintendent, and set the budget.
This plan would run on a six year trial basis, after which the state legislature could change or end the experiment.
Here are some of the quotes from the mayor’s message on the LAUSD:
“Unless we solve the crisis in our schools, we shall never truly hold ourselves to account.
“We can’t be a great global city if we lose half of our work force before they graduate from high school… Eighty-one percent of middle school students are trapped in failing schools.
“We won’t tap our talent – L.A. won’t be one city if we just shrug our shoulders and adopt the path of least resistance.
“We need to make our schools more accountable by giving the superintendent far greater operational control. We need to change the funding equation and move resources from the downtown bureaucracy to the classroom.
“We need to abandon the one size fits all approach and give educators the freedom to innovate. Teachers should be respected as professionals. We need to trim the fat and beef up teacher pay.
“Every great school must have a great leader. We need a new principal leadership academy to develop a new generation of school leaders.
“Schools should control their own budget. More power should devolve to principals, teachers and parents in their [own] neighborhood.
“We need to lengthen the school day and the [school] year, and compensate teachers for that time.
“We need to genuinely engage parents as partners, with respect. We need a parent resource center and a parent coordinator in every single school.
“We need to substantially increase the number of charter schools in L.A.
“We need to replace the culture of low expectations with a culture of accountability and respect – that means uniforms, that send our kids a message that they’re in school to learn, and that we’re all on the same team. That means a parent compact, that spell out their rights, and their responsibilities to be actively engaged in their children’s education.
“We need to reinvent vocational education and give our kids more job based skills.
“We need to better coordinate city and school district efforts… by bringing cutting edge law enforcement tools, like “ComStat” in and around school campuses to guarantee our schools are free from crime and gangs.
“We need to expand after school programs, and work together on joint use to transform schools into neighborhood centers.
“We need to wake up, and shake up the bureaucracy at the LAUSD. So today, I’m asking the California Legislature to usher in a new era of progressive reform in the state’s largest school district… based on five key principles:
1 – “The buck needs to stop at the top; fragmentation is failing our kids. Voters need to be able to hire and fire, one person accountable to parents, teachers and taxpayers – a leader who is ultimately responsible for system-wide performance.
2 – “All of the cities in L.A. Unified need to be fully engaged, and given a fair voice in the process.
3 – “We need to give the superintendent the power and authority to lead and manage fundamental change.
4 – “We need to preserve the voters’ voice – an elected school board, with powers designed to serve the needs of parents, not politicians.
5 – “We need to strengthen and invigorate the charter school movement, both to give families more choices, and to keep positive pressure on the school bureaucracy.
“My proposal will give the mayors of the cities in L.A. Unified a new oversight role in {school] district affairs. A council of mayors, with proportional representation, will oversee the hiring and firing of the superintendent, and approve the budget. This proposal will add accountability by giving the superintendent, not the school board, the authority to direct personnel decisions, grant charters, develop the budget, and design and manage the instructional program.
“It will preserve the current elected school board, but it will define and redefine its responsibilities. They [school board members] will be put directly in the service of L.A.’s parents… The elected board will continue to oversee disciplinary and transfer appeals … we will ask them to be advocates for parents and the communities they serve.
“They will review complaints, create school accountability report cards, conduct an annual survey of parents, and make recommendations based on the results. Their ultimate charge will be to help parents navigate through the system and solve problems with their kids’ schools.
“We’ll ask the Legislature to make these changes on a trial basis, with six years to show progress and results. We’ll measure what we did, and how we did it, and we’ll hold ourselves accountable as well."
Addressing teachers at the close of his speech, the Mayor stated “I know that this proposal will raise some concern, and spark some controversy. Change is never comfortable. I understand your fear. It’s hard to risk what you’ve got, when you’ve never had what you deserve.
“I believe that any serious effort to improve our schools begins and ends with you. I’ve been fighting for public education my entire life. It was a public school that gave me a second chance, and a public school teacher that showed me the path to success. The teachers’ union gave me a job, but more importantly, they gave me a calling…We will never fix our schools, without raising respect and reward for the teaching profession."
KFWB is reporting that Mayor Villaraigosa will not travel Monday to Dallas to meet with NFL officials as originally planned. Instead, he will stay in town while immigration protests are underway. However, Villaraigosa plans to stay in his office during the daytime protests, but may participate in an after hours protest.
